"Gill, B M - Tom Maybridge 03 - The Fifth Rapunzel 1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gill B M)
Rhoda took a few paces away from him and picked up the penholder. "Engraved. T.B.' Peter Bradshaw. Nice present from someone. Your mother, perhaps." She put it down again. "Go along and get yourself cleaned up, Simon. You're walking grass and mud into the carpet. And when your hands are clean, put the kettle on. I'm sure Mrs Maybridge would like a cup of tea."
It was brusquely dismissing. The bubble of emotion pricked with a sharp pin.
"It must have hurt him," Meg told Tom later. "She could have been kinder but at least she's not leading him on." She had declined the tea, making an excuse of having to do some shopping. "I went to fetch my basket from the kitchen, hoping to see him, but he wasn't there. He'd left the study, looking abject like a kicked dog. I wanted to give him the photo, but not in front of her. Luckily he was on his own, doing something to the car, when I was leaving, and I handed it to him then. It was in an envelope. He looked at it as if it were a subpoena, he was still very uptight, but he took it graciously enough when I explained. I told him to come round and visit us sometime. And have a talk. I suppose I should have said for a meal - or a drink - or a round of golf with you. The word 'talk' seemed to shrivel him up. He hardly said goodbye."
Maybridge tried not to smile. Meg's 'talks' could spark off bonfires. He wondered what was worse - a frigid indifference to other people or too much concern. "You can't wade in and sort out his love life for him," he told her. "If his parents were around, they couldn't either. At eighteen, an obsession with an older woman isn't unusual. She's probably harmless. If she isn't, it's up to him to sort her out. And if he can't then he can come to me and I'll do all I can. But he must come to me first. Friends can be too intrusive. As for his chucking medicine as a career, he's probably right. It amazes me how he got through the interview. Candidly, if I were mortally ill in hospital, seeing Simon approaching with a stethoscope around his neck would hasten the end."
Meg, who hadn't been expecting that sort of response, was annoyed. If students had academic ability, and Simon had, it was enough to be going on with, she pointed out. Students grew into their chosen profession as time went by. All they needed was a chance to start. "He's sabotaging his future, and she knows about it and doesn't care. I can't help being worried."
Maybridge didn't answer. He'd had rather a bloody day. Literally. A lad of fourteen had stolen a motorbike and crashed it through a plate glass window. When you arrive on that sort of scene you tend to put other matters into perspective. At that particular time, Simon's affairs seemed of little consequence.
Later that evening Simon showed Rhoda the photo. It was a gesture of reconciliation. Her gesture had been to pour him a large whisky on the rocks. It had always zoothed his father and though it might not be a good idea in Simon's case it was, by implication, a man's drink and she couldn't think of anything else. She was sorry she had belittled him in front of the Maybridge woman, but it had seemed the only thing to do at the time. In retrospect she should have handled the visit better. In retrospect one can usually do most things better. She had changed out of the caftan as soon as her jeans and shirt were dry. It was a pity Mrs Maybridge had seen her wearing it. The wolf in grandma's gear. Red Riding Hood, alias Simon sexually transformed, standing by her bedside, anxious to jump in.
Not so anxious now, thank God. They were sitting looking at a nineteen-forties Western on television. He on the sofa. She on the chair that had probably been Lisa's, a squashy fawn-coloured recliner. Peter would have favoured the upright brown leather, more supportive for his back. Lumbago, he had told her, was an occupational hazard of pathologists and missionaries. Bending over countless cadavers or recumbent ladies in old-fashioned positions took its toll. She had liked his humour - wry - not always kind. His son showed no vestige of humour whatsoever. But, given the drum-stances, what could she expect?
He got up and turned the television sound down before handing her the photo. "My parents," he said laconically. And then he turned up the sound again so that the room was filled with the rattle of gunshot, thudding of hooves and blaring music. He closed his eyes, listening to the din, being anaesthetised by it. He should have felt some pain on seeing the photo - or, perhaps, pleasure - instead he felt guilt. His mother had looked very trim and young in a green dress and matching shoes, the same dark green as the grass. His father, three rows behind, had his head turned towards a blonde woman, a little shorter than he, standing next to him and at the end of the row. It was windy and she was clutching a red straw hat. The only one there with a hat. And the only one he didn't recognise. The others were local people. Teachers from the village school. A couple of librarians. Doctor and Mrs Francome. The vicar and his wife. Steven Donaldson. He couldn't think why they were all grouped there together. Some village event, probably, and his mother seemed to be the star of it, whatever it was. Or Meg Maybridge must have thought so when she'd taken the snap. She stood out from the rest and seemed confident though unsmiling. The centre of attention. Why couldn't she have been calm like that all the time? Socialised. Been ordinary. What had been wrong with her?
Rhoda was saying something and he couldn't hear above the din. Didn't want to hear. Consoling words, probably. He had carried the photograph around in the pocket of his jeans for some while before deciding to show it to her. His mother's manuscripts hadn't meant very much to him. It hadn't mattered that she was reading them. To him they hadn't felt personal. This was the only photograph of his parents he had; if there were others he'd never seen them, and he had been reluctant to share it. Even with Rhoda.
She turned the television off and her voice was sharp in the silence. "Is this your mother standing in the front?"
The question surprised him. It was a good likeness. She had met his mother, hadn't she, at a publisher's party?
"Yes. I thought you would have recognised her."
"I do, of course ... but ..."
He noticed her hand holding the photograph was trembling. "What's the matter?"
She ignored the question. "This was taken here in Macklestone, wasn't it?"
"Yes, by Meg Maybridge. She gave it to me when she called."
"Meg Maybridge," Rhoda said softly. "The wife of the local detective chief inspector. How apt."
She walked out of the room, still carrying the photo-graph, and Simon heard her going upstairs and into his mother's studio. Alarmed for her, she had looked odd and seemed to be talking rubbish, he followed her. He stood outside the door on the landing and spoke her name tentatively. She didn't answer. He tried the door. It was locked. "Rhoda, what's the matter? Are you all right?" "Go away, Simon. Leave me. Just go away." Echoes of his mother's voice. Go away, Simon. Go away. Go away.
Rhoda left the next morning for London. She borrowed Simon's car and left it in the station car park. She had been gone an hour when Simon got up shortly after nine.
He found a note from her propped up against the milk jug: "Have to go home for a few days. You'll find your car in Bristol Parkway near the taxi rank. Yes, I can drive. I won't wreck it. Sorry if I deceived you. Rhoda."
He was appalled she had gone. And then, gradually getting used to the fact, he calmed down. The house without her felt boringly normal. The air was scentless, her perfume removed. He was no longer thrust into an emotional strait-jacket. His body, quiescent in her absence, behaved. No longer in a state of sexual turmoil, he was able to eat. A couple of rashers of bacon. One of Mrs Maybridge's eggs, fried hard. Toast. Strong tea. She had liked hers milkless, sugarless and weak. Afterwards he dumped all the dirty dishes in the sink and turned the tap on them and left them to soak. She had been tidy. "Without a woman to look after you," she had told him, "you'd turn the place into a piggery." Well, maybe. Pigs were placid creatures. He wasn't placid now but he'd stopped feeling as if his insides were being gouged out with a knife. Pain was ebbing.
He wondered if she had left the car key in the ignition. If so, would someone have stolen it? Why had she said she couldn't drive when she could? Were women always that devious?
Going back into the empty house was more difficult than leaving it. It was lonely. Unwelcoming. He went upstairs to the studio and sat on the couch. Rhoda's nightdress, short white cotton with sprigs of flowers on it, was on the pillow. A virginal-looking nightdress, not at all what he would have expected her to wear. He had always imagined her lying naked. He fondled it, sniffed its musky smell, then put it back on the pillow. She had never spoken of any other man in her life. But there must have been. He didn't want to know. Didn't want to think about it.
The morning sun was blazing into the room, making it hot. The rays spotlighted in the picture of the multicoloured bird pinned next to the mural. He imagined it burning then, phoenix-like, rising from the flames with its melancholy cry: Kywitt, kywitt, what a beautiful bird am I! The bird of his nightmares, mocking him.
He went over and ripped it from the wall. Tore it up.
And then he began looking around the room to try to find the photograph. She had brought it up here yesterday. He needed to look at it again. A happy picture of his parents in a group of happy ordinary people. No dark images.
He searched for a long time without success, turning over the papers of the manuscripts, pushing aside the pile of books on the floor by the cupboard, looking in the cupboard where the typewriter and reference books were kept, and then by chance he glimpsed the blue cardboard box half-hidden under the couch. The photograph wasn't there either, but three small books he hadn't seen before took his attention. He had found his mother's diaries.
7.
Rhoda's conscience was an unbiddable animal. It roamed free. When she had moved in on Simon it was over the horizon somewhere, comfortably out of sight, but when she had left him it was snapping at her heels. She kept remembering his anxious voice outside the studio door. "Rhoda, what's the matter? Are you all right?"
No, she wasn't all right. Far from it. She had come to seek and she had found. And it was appalling and frightening and she'd had to get away and plan what to do - if anything could be done. All her anxieties were focused on her missing sister and what might have happened to her. She couldn't carry the extra burden of Peter's son.
In the days when she and Peter were together, sharing his flat for a while, he had accused her of having an exaggerated sense of duty towards Clare. "She's not your everlasting responsibility," he'd pointed out. "When your parents died you quit college so that you could get a job and pay her school fees - for God's sake, what was wrong with the state system? Okay, with an eight-year age gap between you, you felt responsible, I understand that. But she isn't a child any more. Your duty is done." He'd got it all wrong, she'd told him. She hadn't behaved the way she had out of a sense of duty. She had never felt dutiful to anyone. It was a blood tie, but not the sibling stranglehold he imagined. She hadn't used the word love to Peter. It wasn't a word that came naturally to her. Caring for Clare had been a mixture of resentment, exasperation, tenderness, even a touch of maternalism on account of the age gap. When Clare went off on her own and started messing up her life by marrying a ski instructor with better biceps than brains, there hadn't been much she could do about it. But when she had divorced him a couple of years later and had needed a roof over her head for a while and someone to be with her, Rhoda had moved back to her own flat and invited her to stay. Peter had been furious.
His attitude had changed when he met her. Her siren songs were sweet and persuasive and - more surprisingly - she meant them. Clare besotted? Undoubtedly. Peter captivated? It seemed so. She had started hinting to Rhoda - maybe to Peter, too - that she should move into his life permanently. Being with him when he came up to London to lecture at the university wasn't enough. How Peter had responded had been hard to guess. He rarely mentioned his family, but his description of Lisa as 'slightly disturbed' had sounded like an ominous euphemism. It was unlikely he would leave her. Rhoda had warned Clare to watch what she was doing. Peter's domestic set-up with his wife and son was private territory. Keep away.
But Clare had trespassed. Shortly before the Bradshaws' silver wedding anniversary, according to the date Mrs Maybridge had scribbled on the back of the photograph, she had moved right in on to Lisa's home ground.
Lisa's anger must have been intense when she had painted the picture of the long-haired blonde with red slashes of paint across her head and running in long streaks from her throat to her thighs like wounds. When Rhoda had come across it in the loft, it had just seemed an artist's dissatisfaction with a crude piece of work -a crossing-out in crimson. But the photo had given it significance. Clare, in her red hat and red and black striped dress, standing next to Peter. A provocative, daring, stupid statement of involvement. Lisa, standing at the front of the group. Alone.
Rhoda's going and not coming back, despite her saying It would be just for a few days, was hard for Simon to come to terms with. At first her absence was bearable. He got out. Went for long drives. Drove fast. The weather was blowy and the air smelt good. He felt as if his emotions had been vacuumed and everything inside his head was very neat. And then the weather closed in, rain clouds obscured the sun, the wind no longer blew. The house was grey and murky and Rhoda-less. He longed to smell her musky perfume. Touch the warm skin of her hands. Listen to her voice, exasperated, bossing him. He took her nightdress to bed, wrapped it around one of the pillows and hugged it to him. Dreamed of making love to her. And succeeded. In the morning, ashamed, embarrassed, he washed the nightdress sketchily and dried it indoors. Rhoda. Rhoda. Rhoda.
It was during a period of dull despair that he started reading his mother's diaries. They were the three early ones when Lisa had been at her worst and referred directly to him. He read them in the summerhouse with the doors closed against the rain that was slanting down through the leaves of the almond tree, frail leaves that fell soggily into the sodden grass.
He read them guiltily, apprehensively, and with a growing awareness of the maternal bond that would be there for ever, no matter what. In some aspects of her he saw Rhoda, but she overshadowed Rhoda. Her diaries made flesh of the shadow as if she were alive again. Alive and indifferent to him. Or alive and accusing. The bland, smiling, bored, trying hard to be maternal and failing presence was hard to exorcise. Talking about her to Donaldson might help. His note: "If there is anything I can do, then please call on me," had been polite rather than warm, but he might have meant it. Perhaps he could see her medical records - if he dared to ask for them - if he dared to know.
He couldn't remember his last visit to The Mount. His mother's garbled account of taking him there on his sixth birthday was a confusion of anecdotes concerning Hans Andersen and the 'loonies' who wouldn't play with him. His mother's world in those days had been an extraordinary place in which the centuries merged and the past became a grotesque, fairy-tale present. Writers like Andersen and Grimm were a peculiar breed, and illustrators of their sick dreams were probably worse. And she had revelled in them. Caught their virus, perhaps, as she had studied their work. Had she done something else, followed a different career, would she have been all right? And what did he mean by 'all right'? She had been all right, hadn't she, most of the time? Probably all the time when he wasn't around. So the fault must lie with him, mustn't it? There must have been a reason for rejecting him. Had he looked different, had a different personality, would he have passed whatever test she had set?
And would he have passed whatever test Rhoda had set?
Confused, longing for Rhoda, and with his self-esteem about as low as it could be, he walked up the long gravelled drive to The Mount's pseudo-Gothic front door. And Sally let him in.
Sallys are nice girls. Cheerful girls. Therapeutic girls. They bring sunshine into psychiatric hospitals and are a joy to all.
Or almost all.
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